TRANSCRIPT: How To Achieve Well-Being, Balance & Success

Speaker: Steve Piscitelli

How To Achieve Well-Being, Balance & Success 

Hi, I'm Steve Piscatelli. I've been a classroom instructor for more that 30 years. I am an author of student success textbooks, and I get the opportunity to travel this country and work with students and work with faculty and administrators, and we talk about student success issues and strategies and life success issues. And today we're going to look at one of those that I think is the most energizing. We're going to talk about personal well-being and balance.

6 Dimensions

You know, all of us have six dimensions in our lives, and a number of years ago the National Wellness Institute popularized these six dimensions. And what I'd like you to do is get a piece of paper and keep adding to this paper as we go through this video, and I'd like you to write down the six dimensions; and they are social, occupational, spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional. So write those down, and what you'll find, as we go through this topic today, that each one of those dimensions, relate it to the next. In fact, I want you to consider them to be a six-string guitar. Think of that metaphor. And when the strings are in tune, the instrument, which would be you, is playing sweet, sweet music. But, occasionally, all of us, a string gets out of tune, and maybe we have to even restring the instrument. So we want to examine how to be aware of that and then what to do about that with these six inter-related dimensions of well-being.

Balance

All right, so you got your six dimensions of well-being. We'll also talk about balance. Now when we think about balance, the way I'm look at it is this way: Balance is a sense of contentment, when you feel intellectually alert. You feel emotionally stable. You feel physically strong. When we're out of balance, it sounds and it seems like, at times, that all we're doing is hanging on to survive. When we're in balance, we're not surviving, we're thriving. 

So here's what I'd like you to do on your paper, I want you to draw a horizontal line, and I'd like you to put a one, the number one at one end, and a number ten at the other. And I want you to rate yourself. On a scale of one to ten, with one being totally out of balance, all those strings just not playing the instrument well at all, to ten, totally in balance, where do you place yourself, what number? And I'm going to ask, don't choose five. That's too easy. Do you lean toward the out of balance? Do you lean toward the in balance? And then what I'd like you to do is just very briefly write some reasons why you have rated yourself the way you have rated yourself.

Integrity & Habit

All right, so now when you're thinking about well-being and balance, think about it as you're making all these transitions in college and all the adjustments, but these are skills that you can apply outside of college, beyond, in your personal life, in your career. So a couple of concepts to keep in mind here, write these on your paper. Integrity; you're familiar with integrity. You've probably heard about academic integrity. Very simply, it means that you're acting with respect, with responsibility, and with honesty.

When it comes to personal well-being, what I want you to consider for yourself, do you treat yourself with integrity? Do you treat your six dimensions with respect, with responsibility, and with honesty? Because what we want to look at are the habits that are either showing that you do treat yourself with respect, or not.

A habit; habit is just something that we do with such frequency it becomes almost automatic. So we're going to examine, and you're going to examine, even when you turn this video off, what habits do you have that allow you to lead a life of integrity and what habits are challenging you? And I want you to keep this in mind, your life, my life, everybody's life is the sum of small actions, small choices that you make and do each day, the little habits that create the big life, that have an impact on well-being and balance.

Personal Check

All right, time for a little personal check, a little personal awareness. I want you to go back to your two previous activities. You got that scale, one to ten, look at where you put yourself.

Toward the out of balance, toward the in balance, where are you? Look at the six dimensions. Now if you're out of the balance, if you're in balance, it's how your dimensions have been playing out in your life, what you've been doing in each dimension. So I want you to -- beside each of the six dimensions, I want you to do this; pick the one or two that are the strongest in your life, and I want you to put a little plus mark or maybe a check or maybe a smiley face; okay? And then pick the one or two that maybe aren't that strong, put a little minus or a little question mark or a frowny face. So you got the six dimensions, you're focusing in our your top ones, strongest ones, and the ones that are the challenge. We’ll just stop there while you consider that.

5 Habits Of Well-Being

All right, we're going to take a look, now, for the rest of this, we're going to take a look at five habits of well-being. I use a little acronym, and I'd like you to write these five letters down, VPEER -- the letter V-P-E-E-R. They stand for this: V stands for visualize. We're going to take a look at habits of visualization. You want to visualize where you'd like to be with that life of balance and well-being. What's that going to take? Well it's going to take you prioritizing your resources. What else is it going to take? It's going to take you exorcising all those obstacles, especially fear and anxiety. Then you got to exercise each dimension to make it stronger. And then what do you get to do? If you visualize, prioritize, exorcise, and exercise, you get to realize what you have visualized.

V Visualize

Let's take a look at visualize, visualizing your life of well-being. I want you to write three letters down, T -T -Y. Very simply, today is the tomorrow you created yesterday. You didn't just roll out of bed and all of a sudden end up where you are. It happens over time. It's those small choices that you make and do. So what we want to take a look at is how have you gotten to where you are right now, and then where do you want to go. So go back to the list that you created of your six dimensions with the smiley faces or the plusses and the stars, and the frowny faces, I want you to look at those, and I want you to pick one of them. It could be one that's strong and you want it to be stronger. It could be one that's weak, and you want it also to be stronger. You pick the one that you want to work on.

Visualize Your Destination

All right, so you've chosen that one dimension, the one that you want to make stronger. It could be strong already, it could be weak, but you want to focus on this one. Now I'm going to have you write a goal, but I want you to think of it this way. I want you to think of it as a destination. I want you to think of the Heath Brothers and their work at switch. They talk about destination postcards, where you'd like to be. 

When I was a kid I used to write postcards when the family went on vacation. Now we do that as status updates in social media. But the idea is I want you to visualize where you're going to be when this dimension that you have chosen is stronger. I want you to visualize what it looks like, what it feels like, and I want you to write that. I want you to be as vivid as you possibly can, just as if you were writing home about that. Look at where I am. Look at my destination. Look at where I have arrived. Do that now.

Journey To Your Destination

All right, you got the destination postcard. Now we're going to continue to fine tune this, now and after this video. I want you to look at it. Is it specific? Just like with any goal, it has to be specific, exactly where you want to go.

Here's a little pop quiz for you. How do you lose 50 pounds or 30 or 20? You lose it one pound at a time; okay? How do you run a 5K race or a 5-mile race, or even a marathon? You do it one step at a time. How about wealth, how do you build wealth? A penny at a time.

So what I want you to look at is look at your destination, make sure it's specific, and start thinking of how you're going to get there. You do not want to overwhelm yourself. Just remember slow and steady wins the race. Small victories are going to get you to the destination. Don't overwhelm yourself. Let's enjoy that journey to that grand destination.

P Prioritize

All right, we've done visualize, now P, prioritize. You've got to prioritize your resources. So here's what I'd like for you to do, I want you to write the word "value" on your paper, v-a-l-u-e, underneath it, the numbers one, two, three. I want you to think of your life now, and I want you to write the three things that you value the most in your life, the three things that are the biggest priorities in your life. Now these could change. They probably will change over time, over the course of a semester, by the time you get out of college. But right now, what are the three things that you value the most?

Prioritize Your Time

All right, now how did you do on that one? That's a little tough. It really requires some time. That's why I'm going to encourage you, when you're done with the video, go back and look at all these activities and exercises. All right, the next thing I want you to do is write the word "time" on your paper, t-i-m-e, time; one, two, three underneath it. I want you to think of a typical week, 168 hours. Not counting sleep, don't count sleep, what are the three activities that take most of your time in a given week? Now we're talking a typical week. We recognize some weeks are a little atypical, but generally speaking, what three activities take most of your time in a given week.

Value & Time

All right, now you've got the value and time list. I'd like you to compare them. Do they connect? Where you put your time in any given week, is that connecting with what you say you prioritize. All right, example; if you say, "Oh, college is my number one priority, that's the big thing," and then you look at the time side and it doesn't crack the top ten on studies or attending class, you got to start asking yourself some questions. It's a relationship, you're in a relationship with somebody, "Oh, yeah, I love this person." Does he or she connect on the -- where, top ten? If not, you've got to start asking yourself some hard questions. What I would like for you to do is to start focusing on MVP, most valuable priority. What you don't want to do is you do not want to betray yourself. If you say something is most important in your life and you truly believe that, are you putting the time into that priority? Or maybe it's not a priority, that’s something you’ve got to figure out.

Priorities: Non-Negotiable & Negotiable

All right, so now you've looked at the value, the time, your priorities, whether or not you're betraying yourself, let's dig a little deeper on this. When you take a look at priorities, there are priorities that are nonnegotiable, and there are priorities that are negotiable. Nonnegotiable simply means this, you will not let a day, a week, a month go by without addressing it, it's that important to you. There's no way it's going to just slide off the radar. The negotiable is something that, ah, you could do it, you can't do it, you might let it slide, not that big of a deal.

College, you've registered for classes, they have become nonnegotiable. You said your education is important. However, if you start missing class regularly, coming in late, leaving early, missing assignments on a regular basis, what you've done is you've made that nonnegotiable a negotiable. So you want to take a look at what you do in a given week, look at the destination you want to get to. What are the non-negotiables that you've got to focus on to get to those destinations of well-being that are in your mind and in your visualization at this point.

Hit The Reset Button

All right, now listen, at times it happens to all of us, time of a semester, maybe midterms, you know, maybe finals, we get a little bit out of whack with things. Or maybe, you know, good things happen to us, but, also, bad things happen to good people. We understand those things. So what do you feel like I'm just going to give up? What are you going to do? Four letters, H-T- R-B, and they simply stand for hit the reset button. At times, what we got to do is step back and realize what we're doing isn't quite working like we'd like it to, so maybe we need a coach, maybe we need a mentor. But we don't want to quit on that destination, we just got to make a little tweak, a little adjustment. Hit the reset button.

E Exorcise

All right, we've done visualize, prioritize, now it's time for exorcise. Exorcise means to expel, to get rid of something. And a lot of times, on our way to the destination, what happens is we get -- obstacles are in our way, and sometimes those obstacle, we put them there, and one of them could be fear, fearful of a class, fearful of a particular direction, fearful of a group to get involved, whatever it might be. 

I don't know whoever came up with this acronym, but I love it. Fear stands for false experiences appearing real, and a lot of times that's what happens. We worry about things that aren't really going to happen. So what we have to do is when you get into that situation where you're fearing and you don't think you can make it to the destination, just reframe. Look at it from a different point of view. Maybe get a friend to help you. Maybe get a mentor or a coach. But don't let fear become the obstacle.

Activity

All right, I want you to take a look at that destination postcard. Maybe you've adjusted a little bit, you've made it more specific. Here's what I'd like you to do. I want you to visualize that you have reached that future point, no excuses, just changes; no excuses, just changes. How do you like that? How does it look? How does it feel? What's it smell like? What's it taste like? Then look at that destination postcard of yours, and visualize the future with nothing but excuses. No change, and you don't reap the destination. You're pretty much where you are now. How does that look? How does that feel?

Vocabulary

All right, one of the things to pay attention to is your vocabulary, how you talk to yourself, what you're saying up here. And I'm going to encourage that you get rid of three words. It's going to be tough, but do this. Write these three words down, and then I'll tell you what to do with those three words, try, t-r-y; but, b-u-t; and can't, c-a-n-apostrophe-t. You've got them written down? Now put an X through each one. 

Try is an excuse. It makes us feel good. Ah, I was going to get to the tutor lab. I tried. I was going to start my diet this week. I didn't get to it. I tried. Think about this, do you want a professor in class who tries to be exciting or one who is exciting? Do you want a boss who pays you on payday or who will try to pay you on payday? Get rid of try.

Get rid of but. What but does is it erases everything that came before it in a sentence. Think about it. Yeah, I was going to go to the gym, but. I was going to woman work with the tutor, but.

Oh, I love you like a brother, but. You know, it's always a qualifier. Get rid of it. And cant, can't, many times, is code for won't. You want to get rid of those three words. Try, but, and can’t.

2-Minute Drill

All right, so you've gotten rid of those three words and you've focused on action. You got to hit the reset button every so often. And at times, maybe it gets tough, you're overwhelmed. And I understand it because it happens to me. Here's the strategy, I call it the "two-minute drill." What we have to do in order to create a good habit or break a bad habit, we need to have what's known as "activation energy," that energy that's needed to get us moving. And sometimes if you look at something too big you're overwhelmed. This goes back to slow and steady wins the race.

So here's the example: You wanted to go work with a math tutor in the Success Center on the your campus but you just never had a chance to do it. Do you have two minutes? Do you have 120 seconds? I've never met anybody who didn't have 120 seconds they couldn't get out of their day. Take that time, go upstairs gob across campus, wherever it is, find the center. Don't go in, just find it. Now you know where it is. Tomorrow, you know where it is, go to it, walk in. Just take two minutes, walk in, look around, maybe you pick up a brochure. Leave. Third day you go back, walk in, "I need a tutor." Shake her hand. Now what you've done is you've started to create a new habit. Two-minute drill, don't overwhelm yourself, slow and steady, small victories, that’s what’s going to win the race.

E Exercise

All right, you visualized, you prioritized, you exorcised, now it's time to exercise. What you want to do is make each dimension strong. Take a look at your destination postcard, that one that you focused on. Remember the pop quiz. You lose weight, you run a race, and you build wealth a step at a time. So we've done the two-minute drill. I want you to think of 2%, just 2%.

Now the Centers for Disease Control generally say that if you want to get into an exercise routine, that you always have to check with your doctor or trainer, and make sure you're doing something that's appropriate for you. But they generally recommend 30 minutes a day. And you can break the 30 minutes into three 10-minute sections. So you could actually park your car on the far end of campus, walk to class, that might give you ten minutes right there. But what I want you to consider is 2%. 30 minutes a day is only about just a little over 2% of your day. Are you worth 2%? 2% investment gets you to that destination. Consider that, 2%, you're worth it.

R Realize

All right, you've visualized, you've prioritized, exercise, exorcise, now you get to realize, the last main strategy here. On your way to the destination, at times there are going to be those obstacles. It happens. So I want to give you a little model, a little four-step model that's going to help you. I don't care if it's in a math class, a history class, in the workplace, or with a relationship, this is gold for you. Here's what you do.

First step, recognize. So what happens? At times before we can make any changes, we've got to recognize there is a need for a change. I get a lot of students who come in, they haven't done well on their quizzes or exams. I say, "Well what are you going to do to make a change?" They go, "I'm going to study harder." Well, you know, after more than 30 years, I'm not even sure what that means. Generally, it means I'm going to do more of what led to failure, but I'm going to do more of it. It doesn't make any sense, does it? So you've got to figure out what's not working, which is what you've been doing with this destination postcard, and now you recognize you need to make a change. That's step one. 

Step two, what you want to do is you've got to plan. You've started that today, the slow and steady, the specifics of your destination. You start coming up with how you're going to get there, the methods, who you're going to work with. Now you've got the recognition, you've got the plan, this is where a lot of people fail. You got to put the plan into action, otherwise if you have a dream and a lot of plans, guess what, you've got a fantasy. You've got to do something. That's the third step; execute. You've got to execute the plan.

Now along the way you might have obstacles. You probably will. I do. Everybody does. What we have to do, then, is recognize those obstacles, make some adjustments, and keep moving toward that destination. Remember earlier, when I said look at your destination postcard and think about a future with nothing but excuses and you quit and you don't -- you know, how do you like that? You want to get to it. That's the fourth stage, enjoy. Enjoy the destination. You're there. It's beautiful. It's what you wanted. It might be even better than what you wanted.

Now here's the gold here. At some point, even when you're in your destination, there's going to be a need for a change, an adjustment, and so you have to recognize that, plan for it, execute the plan, and then enjoy the new destination. It's one of those strategies that is a life-long stretch.

Call To Action

All right, there you have it, you've listened to all those steps. You've done a lot of activities, a lot of strategies, you're looking at the destination. Remember our five habits to well-being and balance: Visualize, prioritize, exercise, exercise, and realize. Now I'm going to leave you with a final call to action. Again, I'm going to give you three letters, S-K-S. Look at your destination.

What do you need to stop doing? What do you know, you look at it, it's sabotaging you? Whether it's in your physical dimension, your emotional, your intellectual, your social, what's not working? And if you're having trouble figuring that out, get a mentor, get a coach, get a good friend.

Next, K, keep. You're doing a lot of good stuff. What's working? I mean you're in college, something's working. What are you going to keep doing? Keep doing it. And the final S, start. What do you need to start doing to get to the destination? We've covered a lot of ground. You've covered a lot of work. Now when you shut the video off, continue this. Continue this. You want to get to the destination. And just remember, as you go through college, you go through relationships, you go through life, just remember three things, choose well, live well, be well.